Final push to save DIA art as bankruptcy takes shape

As the nuts and bolts of a Detroit bankruptcy agreement begin to come together, a former Macomb County lawmaker is pushing for an 11th hour lobbying effort to convince Gov. Rick Snyder to block the sale of Detroit Institute of Arts paintings by Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr.

Former state Senator Tom Guastello, chair of the Oakland County Arts Authority, said his goal is to enlist the help of the Big Four regional leaders to indirectly pressure Orr to take the museum’s artworks “off the table.”

The four leaders – Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel, Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano and Detroit Mayor-elect Mike Duggan -- have expressed varying degrees of opposition to DIA art sales that could help offset the city’s $18 billion debts.

Advertisement

While polls have demonstrated strong public opposition to auctioning art and artifacts, Guastello, a property manager and community activist, said he’s concerned the voices need to be louder.

“We need our elected officials to speak out. It would be a shame if, after the voters of Wayne and Oakland counties and even Macomb County, which has had an anti-tax reputation in the past … approved a millage for the DIA, that everything would fall apart,” said Guastello, who represented a large portion of Macomb County in the state House and Senate in the 1970s and 1980s.

“If there was talk of selling the Tigers or the Red Wings or the Lions and moving them out of the city, people would go crazy.”

At the same time, the federal judge acting as the mediator in the Detroit bankruptcy case, U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen, is reportedly considering a plan to have Michigan and national philanthropic groups raise hundreds of millions of dollars for the city in exchange for protection of the museum’s highly-prized art collection.

Orr has pointedly indicated that art sales, which Detroit’s creditors have clamored for, could be part of the mix. Bill Nowling, a spokesman for Orr, could not be reached for comment.

Hackel said he stands behind Guastello’s plan.

“I agree with Tom’s positioning on this thing,” he said. “… If that’s what it takes, we need to get out front on this and get the governor’s attention.”

Hackel reiterated his position that the sale of any art could spark a halt in Macomb County’s $5 million tax contribution to the arts institute. Depleting some of the museum’s 60,000-piece collection would be a deal breaker, the executive said, though the legalities of the Macomb County Arts Authority withholding millage money would have to be explored.

While Guastello and other DIA supporters fret that the institute’s donations and its art trades with other top-tier museums would dry up, those trying to hammer out a bankruptcy deal that satisfies Detroit’s creditors and employee pensioners worry that attempted art sales would generate a massive court fight.

Both sides seem to agree the museum and the city could be bogged down for years by a hotly-contested move to proceed with a DIA sell-off.

Last week, some reports indicated Orr would need to sell $200 million worth of DIA assets to eventually balance the books. This week, the buzz about donations that would amount to a trust fund to preserve the artworks puts the figure at $300 million to $500 million.

Those amounts would dwarf the $23 million raised annually by the small DIA millage that tri-county taxpayers approved last year. The trust’s impact on the millage rate could fuel further speculation.

Regardless of the varying bankruptcy solutions, Guastello said Orr and other key players must understand that “selling off assets” carries far more finality for a top-notch museum than it does for other city items that might go on the auction block.

“Down the road,” he said, “you can’t just go out and get a ‘blue light special’ on a Van Gogh or Monet painting.”